Netflix Culture Change

Direct feedback sounds like something the US mens Soccer team needs.

This hits home. Our stand ups are a "safe space" but we can't name any individuals. I've complained about team members not pulling their wieght and was offered TOIL because they knew it was an issue and wanted to give me something for putting up with it. Absolute BS.

rainbow dildos everybody!

"its a fuck shit stack" kekw

prime... why when you highlight text do you highlight from the second char of the sentence to the second last ... every time ...

Did Netflix show the documentary about the Department for Work and Pensions (Honesty Integrity 😞 Impartiality Objectivity) a grandfather weighed 27KG at the end—they sanction 60-year-olds to no food (to pay a tax on rain) 350,000 lives shortened

A company should not have a culture or values. Period.

Secret Panda Society ft EJ Jung - It's All Gone

"How can I phrase this?" Colleges and Universities have gone from institutions of learning where your views/beliefs/ideas are constantly challenged, preparing you for the World; to places where every goofy ass thought and idea needs to be validated and no one can ever be made to feel uncomfortable about anything, ever. And now all that horseshit is infecting every aspect of life.

Like that, We think.

This is a weird reification of the aims of some commercial company. They aren't NASA. They aren't working towards a Greater Purpose. It's commercial.

So then the desire here seems to really be for bro culture and rude boys. People are more important than companies, but america hasn't figured it out.

A 'nepo-baby' is essentially a person who has acquired and/or maintains a position for which they have little to no qualifications or competencies, due to familial connections.

Oh thank god I’m not expected to write good code. I’m dissatisfied with 90% of the code I write, but it’s running in prod, so it’s good enough.

Hey Prime/anyone reading this, I've been following your channel for months and I've gotten a lot more interested in frontend development, notably having started theodinproject and consistently doing the tasks (finally getting out of tutorial hell). I'm studying a bachelor's of computer science here in Melbourne and i have to choose my major really soon and I'm unsure as to what to choose between data science and full stack development.
On the one hand I'm pretty interested in full stack development and I do want to land that FAANG job like anyone else but I've also always loved math and problem solving so there's a bit of interest in data science too. I was leaning more towards picking data science as I feel it's easier to get into frontend//full stack by myself using online courses (like theodinproject) and other channels like yours thus I'll be equipped with both data science and full stack skills. 
On the other hand if i pick full stack I feel i'll be able to specialise soon which would give me more in depth experience and skills bringing me closer to high proficiency in this area and equipping me better for interviews at top companies, better to be a master of one than a jack of all trades?
I'd really appreciate any advice/input as to other considerations that anyone here in the comment section might have as well as what I should take into account or what you might do in this situation. 
Thanks!

So you complain about inability of being direct at Netflix. Then you use phrases like ‘certain trends’, ‘certain people’. If you are all about being direct, be direct. Don’t make us guess what trends and people you are talking about.

The irony is that for feedback to be effective and well receive, the ratio of praise to criticism need to be inversely correlated to skill level. Meaning people at lower skill generally need more praise, because they are still figuring out if their time and effort are well invested. It can also be tricky to distinguish progress at this stage.

People who have the skill have already established that their time and effort are put to good use and can see their own progress clearly. Therefore, praising is basically telling them something they already know when the criticism is the actual thing that they want to know.

The S### Sandwich approach tries to go for the middle road but is not the proper approach to each individual case.

I know yuou are a streamer, but the money you left at the table dude... It is never too late to apologize to your boss and go back...

I'm genuinely confused why "Don't be evil" is a "stupid and meaningless" phrase.

It's interesting how the code review comments are seen as too direct in the US while here in Germany/Switzerland it is totally normal to write things like "This is bad because A, B and C. Please do D and E instead".

the only company I want to work for is one who doesn't have any BS values and clearly states that too. All just complete BS and so cringe that mean nothing.

Google dropped "Don't be evil" because it stopped adhering to it.

At my last company we hired a product manager who came in and:

- Would insult the programmers at literally every refinement meeting. if they asked any questions about things he would say everything from passive aggressive: "this is extremely simple, anyone should be able to understand this", to straight out using the word "stupid" etc
- Would emit long, extra-dramatic "sighs" literally as soon as programmers would come off mute, sometimes even saying things like "here we go again"
- Would raise his voice or straight yell at people when he was confronted with something he hadn't thought of
- When confronted with his behavior, he said he doesn't think programmers are colleagues, that we shouldn't be allowed to speak or make any decisions or ever question product, that we are going to be replaced soon with robots ("a computer can do your job"), and he preferred his last job where programmers were all outsourced and he didn't have to interact with them

It became so bad the programmers went to HR about it. HR proceeded to do an investigation:

First bad sign: the HR team came in and before they did any investigating they explained "we think it's a both-sides thing"; it wasn't a both sides thing: not one programmer had ever been insulting, and had always been kind but direct in their feedback. HR also said: "this is normal, we've never worked anywhere there hasn't been conflicts between product and engineering", which is another bad sign: this wasn't any kind of typical "product vs engineering" priorities thing, like features versus "tech debt" or whatever, nor was it normal: it was an extreme case of a product manager who literally hated programmers and didn't want to collaborate with them.

At the end of the investigation HR decided: the product manager was fine and should stay but the programmers were "too direct" in their feedback and needed professional communication training. Not one programmer had ever been insulting, passive aggressive, hostile in any way. We all just pointed out real objective problems with the designs and plans.

After that programmers just stopped communicating at all and basically checked out at the company and it quickly went downhill. Made me learn quickly that HR is not a good concept for tech companies.

Objective, quality feedback makes you better across the board regardless if you're a developer or not, love this take on company culture.

Prime, you too need to look past your bias. You always assume that directness is only directness, and not a**holery or politics hiding behind the facade of directness. You worked at Netflix when it was growing. The majority of people you worked with instinctively embodied the principles. They didn't instinctively work to abuse them. Once a company grows to a large size and/or its growth stagnates, the number of people subverting the principles grows. Also the people who previously used to embody the principles find it harder to do so when challenged. Not being able to accept direct feedback, and hiding your politics/a**holery under the garb of directness are two sides of the same coin.

Sometimes I get good feedback when people ask. And I give it when people ask, as a sandwich. Unless I know them well, then I would only do the sandwich thing if there are also positive elements that need to be reinforced.

An event which has caused me to be a bit more direct and explicit of my opinions, instead of polite:
Main developer guy gives a presentation to a group of other developer guys. We have a goal that all of us agree on. He says "I see that there are two ways to reach this goal, they are <X> and <Y>. Now everyone knows that I prefer solution <X>, but I know some people do not like that so I've also come up with solution <Y>". He explains the second idea, and then says that he's willing to do all the work to reach the goal, and he wants to know if he should implement <X> or <Y>. We take a show-of-hands vote, and <Y> wins. He then goes around the table and specifically asks each person what they prefer. One person at a time, and each one of us said the <Y> solution would be fine (not "best", but "yeah, sure, the <Y> solution is fine").
Months later he has the time to do the project. When he's faced with actually doing the work, he contacts us all and says "Okay, I know we all agreed that I should do <Y>, but just how upset would anyone be if I did <X> instead? I'll still do <Y> if people do not like <X>, but I really do think that <X> is the better solution". It turned out that every single person in that meeting actually preferred solution <X>, but we all voted for <Y> because we wanted to be nice and not stir up any trouble or bad feelings. We unanimously voted for one solution even though we unanimously preferred the other one, all because everyone was too nice to state what their actual opinion was.

LOL the only thing saving netflix lately was fucking over customers with the multiple logins. When you have to do shit like that to keep the lights on and investors happy instead of actually innovate, you're done.

Should I be shorting Netflix? Sounds like it’s only a matter of time till it gets to zero.

Netflix product has been poor for years, like since the Marvel deal ended and the golden age turned into trough TV. I don't believe problems with the culture is a new thing.

I personally think Netflix went from being the best streaming platform to one of the worst.

A) Cancelled every single show I ever loved after way too early seasons. Riverdale has about 5000 seasons at this point.
B) The UI was so fricking annoying.
C) My actual needs are just not being met.

No idea if this is how many people feel, but I wish Netflix had sticked with how it operated back in the old days and focused on creating a future with series we wanted rather than they think we need.

Oh we doin NYT articles now! Let's go!

Huh... I absolutely hate when streaming platforms autoplay the billboard. And you said it failed because it lost engagement? But that was the entire heckin point of NOT autoplaying the billboard, I DON'T want to engage with the platform at that point and it actually turns me off of the platform lmao...

Anyway, why the fuck is it not just a setting... why does it have to be A/B tested

I think there are ways of being direct AND protecting psychological safety though right? as someone who was shitcanned while 6 figures in debt for reasons I didn't understand or couldn't properly address, I don't like either the "flowery" culture of overly polite BS OR the "we only hire 10x engs get effed" BS either.

Directness MUST be accompanied by
1) intellectual humility
2) respect
3) clarity, and the willingness to clarify more. The statements should be evaluate-able and falsifiable.

otherwise it can go the wrong direction. Do you feel like Netflix has/had those 3?

All phrases are meaningless if you ignore them.

wtf

Is there a version of this for the rest of FAANG?

If you listen to this without recognizing that this dude has 5 years of earned stock options at Netflix, bless your heart

This channel has no value add. Unsubscribed.

I went through a full interviw process for a marketing position and knew before the first round that I wasnt getting in after reading the culture memo. I'm more of a "work hard and get it done" kinda guy versus Netflix's " Give me B work and 100% culture alignment and we'll accept it over A work and a 90% culture alignment". THEN, about a week after i got rejected they edited their culture memo down to like a page or something.

poggers

Netflix seems like the type of company where 1 developer should be enough.
I’m not sure why they would need an entire team to do what they do.

Good and bad but it’s no longer the Netflix I once enjoyed working at

It has always been "DON'T get caught BEing EVIL"

“Quitting Netflix was my last step of going from a boy and becoming a man” ie a full time twitch streamer…

They needed you last night for the Tyson fight.

I had a dev claiming to be senior then submitted a buggy crud feature pr to me. I fired his ass immediately! wtf??? I hate liars and cheaters!

I remember when I got rid of Netflix, it was when thing started autoplaying. Not sure which thing, but I remember really disliking when I stayed on something too long it would start playing, and I couldnt read the description I was just like - I'm Out.

I have literally sailed the high seas since. Its wild to me that I get a better experience with Plex than Netflix at this point.

I tried paying for Amazon video, but the mixing of included and rented stuff, and the clunky way of finding a show and then selecting a season was annoying AF.

I periodically pay for a month or two of a platform that is making something I like, but then I watch it on plex. I have dipped into Apple TV for severance and Silo, and then Netflix for Stranger things, and then paramount plus for a couple of movies, but overall, I find the plex experience just better. And its nice that its one platform for all things I want to watch and have watch history for.


I would have stuck with Netflix forever had they not done the autoplay. And the final straw for never going back was giving into the mob mentality around Community and removing the DnD episode. It felt like the product was bad and I could also know that the people working there were people that probably don't like me or my opinions.

Baseball has a similar ethos, as dramatized in Moneyball when Jonah Hill's character fires a player.

Capitalism ruins everything.